17. Chapter Seventeen #2
I’m still standing at the railing, watching Nightglass and Lark reunite with who I assume is their wife and mother. She’s a gorgeous woman with red hair braided down to her hips. She crouches down, and the little pirate clings to her like a little monkey. A smile tugs at my lip at the sight.
More pirates reunite with family as the lower ranks are still busy bringing the goods on land up from the hold, carrying more and more chests and barrels until they line up on the surrounding beach and the docks.
They must’ve been quite busy organizing things on their travels.
Sable is the last one to leave the ship.
His shoulder brushes mine as we walk down the plank.
Eyes follow me as our feet touch solid ground for the first time in weeks.
A man leaning against a crate lets his gaze linger on me, dragging it from my face down to my collarbones.
Sable stops. His head turns, and his eyes lock onto him.
The man holds his stare, then his jaw tightens and he looks away first, pushing off the crate as if he suddenly has somewhere else to be.
“You have to remember,” he carefully places a hand on my back and leads me through the crowd. “That many of us have lost someone to a siren. They will know what you are. The sea has its way of carrying rumors through the wind.”
I quickly nod, pulling my guard up, though weirdly, him being with me gives me a sense of security that I haven’t felt before. I’m not used to feeling protected.
“You remember what you promised me earlier?” he asks in a low voice, not wanting anyone to hear.
“I must stick with you. I am not to talk to anyone. And under no circumstance should I use my voice.”
“Well remembered, little fish,” he replies, and his shoulders relax by the second. No one has attacked me yet, which I take to be a good sign. The crowd naturally splits in front of us, which clearly proves that Sable’s got a reputation that extends beyond his ship.
“Where are we going?” I manage to ask, while his hand stays firmly planted on my back.
It doesn’t feel like control, like a reminder that I am under his authority.
This is nothing he does to keep me in line.
In fact, it feels like he does it simply to…
be close to me. To touch me. At the thought of it, my heart stumbles, and I become aware of the steady weight of his hand, the heat of it through the fabric.
It would be easier if I could pull away, but I don’t.
And I can’t. With a flicker of unease, I realize that I wouldn’t want him to pull away either.
“To find my sister,” he replies decisively, “and then, we’ll have some much-needed fun.”
When I glance in his direction, a corner of his mouth is pulled into a slight smile.
“We will be having fun? Am I included in this scenario?” I ask, and immediately regret the question.
“Well, joining is optional. You can choose to stay miserable and mysterious, little fish. Whatever you prefer.”
I stop walking and punch him against his broad chest. Sable only flashes me a grin and then laughs, not even pretending that my hit hurt him the slightest.
“Stop calling me that,” I cross my arms over my chest as we keep walking further into the harbor.
Fires burn along the quay, their heat warming my skin as we pass by.
Nets hang from posts, heavy with drying seaweed and bone charms. The lanterns swaying above us cast a warm light on the wet cobblestone beneath us.
“Calling you what?” He asks, playing dumb.
“You know what I mean,” I roll my eyes, then glance behind me again. “Little fish.”
“Ah. Well, I have gotten used to the name. I guess you have no choice but to live with it.”
When the crowd becomes tighter again, and the wooden buildings seem to lean into the narrow pathway, Sable's hand finds my back again. Softer, this time, but it’s there.
I want to shake off the feeling of electricity jolting through my body.
I can’t be sure what it means exactly, but I know I shouldn’t be feeling it nonetheless. Not with him.
I swallow and take a deep breath. I catch Sable looking at me from the corner of my eye, and he removes his hand slowly, as if he himself feels what I feel, that it is too unnatural a feeling for him to keep his hand there.
We are not the kind of people who would be touched in that way.
But no matter how odd the feeling of his hand on my back was, I can’t help but feel disappointed when the pressure of it lifts.
He leads me further into the village. Now and then, I catch people gawking out of their windows or looking down from makeshift balconies as we pass by.
Almost all the houses are made out of wood, and it looks like they just reused whatever was left from broken ships or was brought to the shore by the tide to build them.
The door frames are painted or carved beautifully.
And then there are the bones that decorate almost every door.
A symbol of loss and death, likely a memorial to family members they lost.
When I look ahead of us again, Grim disappears into the crowd.
Sable doesn’t slow his pace.
We leave the busiest part behind and climb higher into the rock, following a steep and uneven path.
The noise becomes duller up here, and as I look behind us, I find fog already separates us from the life below.
We cross a bridge, which brings us from one cliff to another.
The stone walls pressing in on either side make the path even narrower, so that I have to walk in front of Sable now.
Strange things hang from above, bundles of dried seaweed, glass bottles filled with cloudy liquid, and strings of shells that do not seem to be there for decorative purposes.
Then the path opens up in front of us, and Sable’s footsteps slow down behind me.
Built into the cliff itself, half made of wood and half made of stone, the house looks like it grew into the rock instead of being built there. There are no bones above the door frame, but instead, hundreds of shells surround the door that appears to be made out of driftwood.
For the first time since we made port, he hesitates.
“You don’t want to see her?” I ask quietly, looking up into his face, trying to read his expression.
Sable just stares at the door, eyes flickering towards the light spilling through one of the windows of the house.
“She doesn’t like surprises.”
“Sable, I don't think there’s any chance she doesn’t know we‘re here, it’s like you said, the sea has its way of carrying rumors through the wind.”
His gaze drifts for a moment, his jaw tightening slightly before he nods. He strides towards the door and is about to knock, but the door swings open before his knuckles meet the wood.
Behind him stands the most breathtaking woman I have ever seen.
“There you are,” she says, her white teeth flashing in her smile. “Took you long enough, brother.”
I stand there awkwardly as the siblings share a hug, and I use the opportunity to gawk at her shamelessly.
Her hair is black, like Sable’s, but where his is loose and slightly waved, hers is like dark, dripping oil, not unlike the waters that surround the island.
Corals and shells seem to grow out of her, as much a part of her as her skin, scattered around in all the colors imaginable.
Faint pinks, deep reds, and oranges. The biggest corals sit on her shoulders like decorations.
Like jewelry gifted to her by the sea. Her dress slides loosely over her figure, glistening in the lantern light like a seaweed layered over black silk.
When her eyes land on me, I do not look away.
Instead, I meet her gaze and offer her a slight smile, careful not to show off the sharp point of my canines.
I am certain that if she didn’t want me here, I wouldn’t even have made it up the cliffs.
She is powerful. I can feel it in the buzzing of energy that radiates from her. Sea magic.
“So, this is the siren I’ve been hearing about,” she says as she releases Sable from their embrace and steps towards me. The corals on her shoulder clink together as she moves. “The sea whispered about you days ago. It was all she could talk about.”
The magic radiating from her makes the air around us hum.
Where the imbalance of power between us may be a point of jealousy within me, it does not frighten me.
Instead, I feel a connection there in the air between us.
We’re both creations of the sea, one of us decidedly more than the other, I’ll admit, but it counts nonetheless.
I have never met someone even close to being what I am. She must know what it's like to be stared at. To be different. To be feared.
“Nice to meet you,” I say quickly, offering her my hand. “I’m Eryse.”
“Eryse,” she repeats, a smile tugging at her lips as she looks at me knowingly with sharp eyes.
“I’m Cailia.”
“Alright,” Sable says from behind his sister, reminding us of his presence. “Now that you two have sniffed one another or whatever is customary for you, can we go inside now? We have a lot to discuss.”
Cailia raises one brow, a smile tugging at her lips.
“He’s impatient,” she tells me quietly before turning to follow Sable into the house.
Tell me something I don't know.
As soon as the door is closed, the candles inside the room come to life and flicker, immediately brightening the room.
The walls inside are fused with corals in places where brick should be, pale branches of it crawling up the corners and jutting out underneath the roof.
There are shells embedded into the walls too, not hung or placed, but as if they grew there.
As if it is their natural place in the world.
Glass jars line rough wooden shelves, filled with water, sand, bones, or strands of kelp.
In between them, books are stacked on top of one another, looking old and ancient.
Sable pulls a chair draped with nets and dried seaweed from under the wooden table and perches on it.
“We finally found the Glim,” he announces in all seriousness, straightening his posture against the back of the chair.
“Wrong,” she interrupts, walking around the table in slow circles, her long gown sweeping behind her. I am yet to fully enter the room, lingering by the entrance with uncertainty.
“It found her.” Cailia points one finger at me before continuing her pacing, the candles flickering each time she passes them.
What does she mean by "the Glim found me”?
The ghost told me it shows up to interfere and enforce fate.
It doesn’t fully make sense, no matter how many times I think about it. The Glim is guiding the Noctis. Not me.
“So she is tied to it? Is it her fate we’re following?
” I exchange a look with Sable. His grey eyes bore into mine, and I can’t bring myself to look away.
He’s right to ask. If the Glim is there to make sure the sea gets what it wants, it could be leading me towards my fate, not the crew to theirs.
And they have a curse to break, they cannot afford to follow the Glim blindly. A lump forms in my throat.
“Not necessarily. It could be tied to all of you.”
Cailia’s eyes land on me as she stops in her steps.
“Have you seen the Glim before you boarded the Noctis, siren?” she asks, her tone demanding, direct.
“No, I hadn’t even heard of it before I ended up on the ship, ” I answer truthfully and step toward the table, quickly glancing towards Sable for reassurance before looking at his sister again.
He knows I don’t remember boarding the ship.
She squints her eyes as though she is assessing my answer.
She must hate dishonesty as much as her brother.
“If it first appeared after you boarded the ship, then that’s where you needed to be, I am certain,” she says and begins pacing the room again, her arms folded neatly in front of her chest.
“Why do you think the Glim brought us back home? Could it be a sign that our fates are intertwined in some way?”
“I don’t know, brother. But do not question the sea. She knows. I can’t tell you more, but—“
She stops talking mid-sentence, inhales deeply, and closes her eyes, listening for something neither me nor Sable seems to hear, before exhaling slowly.
When she opens her eyes again, they are pitch black.
The light of the candles surrounding her creates flickers of light on their surface.
Little dots of light, like stars reflecting on the surface of the sea at night.
“—the siren is your fate, Sable Crowe,” she says in an otherworldly, smooth voice. I know whose voice that voice belongs to instantly. She has whispered things into my ear ever since I was a little child. Reassuring me. Mocking me. Taunting me.
The sea.